It’s All About Control!

20042011

This whole talk about being healthy would naturally take our talk from what we eat to looking at diets. But I for one don’t like to focus on diets as after all, who want to eat like a bird 24/7. I have learned I can eat pretty much whatever I want beacuse at the end of the day it is all about control. It’s controlling what and how much of it we put in our bodies so that we maintain a healthy weight. Why is maintaining a healthy weight so important? Because if you are overweight you have a higher probability of developing things like heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, etc… So it really does come down to food being the fuel that fosters our bodies’ ability to fully function. Food is like energy we store up and pay out as we go about our day. If we consume too much food and drink, our bodies begin to store it up and that’s when it turns into fat. So even a small imbalance with how much we eat and the energy used or lack thereof means that we can become overweight. Therefore to maintain a healthy weight, the calories you eat must equal the energy you burn (this is also where exercise comes in but we’ll talk about that next week).

Being overweight really means that you have more body fat than is healthy and how do you measure this? You measure this by looking at your body mass index. You body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. You can check your BMI by going to http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

If you are a little out of control with what you’re eating, which equals a high BMI, then here are a few weight-control strategies that may help you;

Choose low-fat, low-calorie foods. I know when I just look at the label on things I am eating and realize how many calories and fat grams are in them, it helps me make a different choice. Try that for the next week and see what you are eating.

Eat smaller portions. Instead of two scoops of ice cream, I have found one scoop of low fat yogurt does the same trick 🙂

Drink water instead of soda or drinks full of sugar. A dentist once told me if you put your a tooth in a glass of soda it would disintegrate. If that is the case, what do you think drinking soda does to your body?

Exercise – we’ll leave that conversation for next week.

I think if we all stopped long enough to think about what we are putting in our bodies and how much of it, we may make total different decisions about what and how much we eat. This is why I love being on Weight Watchers as it really does help me realize all that I am storing up in my body. That indeed is the mechanism to get my weight under control and actually when you think about it, it really isn’t about weight but about living a healthy lifestyle. The question for this week is, in what ways might you gain control of creating a healthy life style for yourself?

Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork. ~English Proverb

Your stomach shouldn’t be a waste basket. ~Author Unknown

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. ~Plutarch